Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Running Time: 84 minutes

Release Date: July 26, 2013

Review by: Stacey

 

Why the hell didn't anyone tell me to watch this movie years ago?  How did I manage to barely watch it this past weekend?  Help me out, guys! I think I kept getting Frankenstein's Army and I, Frankenstein mixed up because I've heard piss-poor things about the latter and kind of just shied away from any recent movie that had the name "Frankenstein" in it.  Well, hangover me decided to cross my fingers and click play and goddamit, I am glad I did.

Shot through the camera lens of Dimitri (Alexander Mercury) for a propaganda film, the story follows Russian soldiers who are led further into Germany after receiving a distress call from fellow comrades.  They end up stumbling upon a secret lab run by Nazi, Viktor Frankenstein (Karel Roden), who has taken the journal of his grandfather, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and brought to life creatures created from fallen soldiers and various machinery.

Sounds fucking wild, right?  The Frankenstein story has been done to death, so seeing a refreshing take on it was awesome, especially when it involves wacky Nazi experiments.  Director Richard Raaphorst's creatures (or "zombots" as they're credited in IMDB) were designed so well and there definitely wasn't a lack of them either.  They looked like they could only come from the mind of someone demented.  The Nazi doctor's lab at the end was something out of your worst nightmares- half machine/half humans chopping off body parts of unfortunate victims.  All kinds of grotesque-looking monsters were roaming around that I wanted to see more of.

 

Okay, I get why the film started off as found footage; they were filming a propaganda film.  What I don't get is why they KEPT filming after they finally came face-to-face with the zombots.  If a giant machine creature zombie thing was trying to slash at me with its propeller face, I would have probably dropped the camera and ran for the hills.  The film is also hindered by it because there's a lot that happens during the action-packed scenes that we can't see because the camera is too shaky or Dimitri isn't standing at a good enough angle to see a creature.  Also, were there HD cameras in the 1940's?  Just wondering...
 

 

I never found myself caring too much for the character's fates either.  They weren't written very well but I guess that doesn't matter when you just want them to die so you can see more of the zombots.  The use of practical effects for the creatures is enough to satisfy anyone who wants a film that doesn't heavily rely on CGI or character development, for that matter.

Frankenstein's Army was a super fun film and took something that most people are morbidly fascinated by (the Nazi regime's weird experiments) and a classic monster story we all love and stitched it together to give us a film that I think fans of the genre will have a blast with.

4/5 OKAY IT'S TIME TO STOP FILMING

 

Check out the trailer below!